DON'T HIDE FROM IT

Drugs Are in Our Schools; It's A Fact to Face

The Sunday headline surely caught some attention. "Campus drug busts
sting 5 students in Fairbanks," it stated.

Here? In Fairbanks?

Don't laugh, but there are probably people in this community who read
that headline and accompanying story as a great surprise. We don't
hear much about the use of marijuana and other illegal drugs in our
public schools, and that's unfortunate.

It's unfortunate because drugs are used in our schools. To think
otherwise is foolish. To have that knowledge confined to the circle
of school administrators and law enforcement officials would be a
mistake. We all need to know about; the media need to report it.

What's unusual with last week's arrests of four students at West
Valley High School and the discovery of a drug-possessing student at
Ryan Middle School is the disconnect between the media attention and
the comment from a Fairbanks police officer, who said the incidents
are "consistent with the level of marijuana use in the Fairbanks
community." That seems to suggest that the number of students
involved in drug use and who cross paths with law enforcement isn't
as surprising as it might seem.

What that tells us is that a pretty good segment of the public --
those beyond school and law enforcement officials and some parents --
doesn't have a good sense of what's going on.

The community isn't well served when people have the impression that
schools are islands of peace that are not subject to some of life's
ruinous influences. Parents whose children attend Fairbanks public
schools may or may not be more in tune with the notion of drug use on
campus, but what about the rest of the population?

Meanwhile, reading about the on-school drug transgressions of the
West Valley and Ryan students, who ranged in age from 14 to 17,
should jolt parents into being a little more inquiring about the
activities of their own children. Odd behavior needs a close look.

The headline may indeed have been startling. What's really startling,
however, is being told that it shouldn't have been.